SAN FRANCISCO--(EON: Enhanced Online News)--Inventors of an Oscar-winning, copyrighted and patented motion picture
technology, called MOVA Contour Reality Capture, are suing
entertainment giants Disney and Marvel in a new lawsuit accusing
them of infringing copyrights, patents, and trademarks while using
stolen technology to make at least three of their highest grossing
motion pictures to date, Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), Avengers:
Age of Ultron (2015), and Beauty and the Beast (2017),
according to Hagens Berman.

“The fact that Disney moved very quickly from an interested party to
dropping out of the running to acquire the MOVA Contour technology tells
us one thing: Disney did its due diligence and knew that Rearden was in
the right”

The intellectual
property lawsuit, filed July 17, 2017, alleges that defendants knew
that the technology they used was owned by Rearden LLC and Rearden Mova
LLC, the plaintiffs in the action, and that the company supplying the
technology to Disney and Marvel had stolen it outright from a secured
storage facility.

The revolutionary MOVA
Contour technology at the core of the lawsuit has been used in films
to capture the most subtle facial performances from actors such as Brad
Pitt in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Jeff Bridges in Tron:
Legacy, Mark Ruffalo as the Hulk in The Avengers, Daniel
Radcliff and Rupert Grint in Harry Potter and the Deathly
Hallows, Parts 1 and 2, and many other blockbuster movies.
The software output permits visual effects studios to project the
actors’ captured facial performances onto computer generated (CG) faces
bringing the CG characters to life. MOVA Contour enabled studios to show
Brad Pitt as an 87 year-old man, project Mark Ruffalo’s facial
performance onto the Hulk’s face, show Jeff Bridges as he had appeared
almost 30 years ago in the original TRON film, and transform
Rupert Grint’s face into Daniel Radcliff’s in Hallows. Button, TRON:
Legacy, Avengers, Hallows 1 and 2, and ten
other films that hired Rearden for facial motion capture have
collectively earned major motion picture studios $9.5 billion worldwide
in box office alone.

Disney in particular had contracted with Rearden to use the MOVA Contour
system in four previous films as the owner of the MOVA Contour
copyrights, patents, and other proprietary technology, which includes
its patented computer program, arc-shaped Contour camera and lighting
rig, synchronized cameras at multiple angles, and specially-mixed
phosphor-based makeup used to capture thousands of control points on the
actor’s face.

“What Rearden created was a combined software and hardware system that
revolutionized what was previously possible in motion picture facial
motion capture, and after years of using Rearden to provide this very
technology, Disney and Marvel suddenly contracted with thieves offering
the identical system for Guardians of the Galaxy in 2014 and Beauty
and the Beast in 2017 without making a simple phone call to ask
Rearden what was going on,” said Steve Berman, managing partner of
Hagens Berman. “Disney has admitted that the MOVA Contour technology was
essential to the phenomenal success of its live-action remake of Beauty
and the Beast, and the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences
cited Disney’s Guardians of the Galaxy in awarding a Sci-Tech
Oscar to the MOVA technology. Now millions of moviegoers who filled
theater seats across the world will know the truth – that Disney’s box
office success was built in part on stolen technology.”

To date, Beauty and the Beast has grossed more than $500 million
at the box office in the United States, and more than $1.25 billion
globally. It is now the tenth highest-grossing film of any rating of all
time and the highest grossing PG-rated film of all time. Guardians of
the Galaxy has grossed more than $333 million at the box office in
the United States and $773 million globally. And Avengers: Age of
Ultron has grossed more than $459 million in the United States and
$1.4 billion globally.

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District
of California, brings claims that Disney Motion Pictures Group actively
induced the infringement of Rearden’s five United States MOVA Contour
patents, Disney and other defendants infringed Rearden’s software
copyright, and Disney and other defendants infringed Rearden’s MOVA
trademark in the making and promotion of Guardians, Avengers,
and Beauty.

The suit seeks monetary damages, disgorgement of Disney’s profits on the
two infringing films, and injunctions prohibiting Disney from
reproducing, distributing, and displaying the films on behalf of the
Rearden inventors and owners of the MOVA Contour proprietary technology.

Stealing the Show… and the Intellectual Property

In 1999, serial inventor and graduate of Apple and Microsoft, Steve
Perlman, formed Rearden LLC and self-funded the company as an incubator
for advanced technology including facial performance capture and other
ground-breaking inventions. Perlman’s facial performance capture
innovations were used in fifteen major motion pictures and were widely
acclaimed in the visual effects and broader motion picture industries.
MOVA Contour ushered in a new age of possibilities for moviemakers like
the defendants Disney and Marvel.

But in 2012, a Rearden employee (Greg LaSalle) began secret negotiations
with Digital Domain 3.0 (DD3), to sell the MOVA Contour system for his
personal enrichment, without Rearden’s knowledge. LaSalle had also
secretly offered the MOVA Contour technology in March 2013 to Disney and
its former Lucas Films subsidiary Industrial Light and Magic.

Rearden wrote a cease and desist letter to LaSalle in March 2013,
reasserting that it owned the MOVA Contour intellectual property, that
LaSalle had taken it illegally, and that Rearden would take legal action
if necessary. According to the complaint, LaSalle then notified
interested parties including Disney and its Industrial Light and Magic
division of Rearden’s claims, both of which swiftly dropped out of
negotiations for MOVA Contour.

“The fact that Disney moved very quickly from an interested party to
dropping out of the running to acquire the MOVA Contour technology tells
us one thing: Disney did its due diligence and knew that Rearden was in
the right,” Berman said.

A mysterious Chinese company affiliated with DD3 called Shenzhenshi then
appeared on the scene claiming to have bought the MOVA Contour
technology and to have licensed it to DD3. In 2013, “LaSalle had access
to the secure storage facility where the physical MOVA Contour apparatus
was kept, and assisted DD3 in taking the patented MOVA Contour physical
apparatus and copies of the copyrighted Contour Program,” according to
the lawsuit. DD3 then began secretly offering MOVA Contour facial
performance capture services to motion picture studios and production
companies, including defendants. But it was all a ruse. LaSalle wrote to
his attorneys that by having Shenzhenshi appear to have acquired the
MOVA Assets and licensed them back to DD3, it would “be nearly
impossible for Steve [Perlman] to go after them.”

Photographs
in the new complaint show the exact apparatus developed and
constructed by Rearden and stolen by DD3. And statements by Beauty
and the Beast co-stars Dan Stevens and Emma Watson confirm that DD3
was using the very same MOVA Contour system and methods that are covered
by Rearden’s patents and copyright. DD3 even used Rearden’s “MOVA”
trademark.

“Despite being concerned enough about Rearden’s cease and desist letter
to back out of acquiring the MOVA Assets directly, and despite knowing
of Rearden’s claim of ownership, Disney continued to secretly use the
MOVA Contour system in Guardians of the Galaxy, Avengers: Age
of Ultron, and Beauty and the Beast, without ever contacting
the inventor company, Rearden, whom Disney knew and had worked with for
years on facial performance capture using MOVA Contour in four previous
films,” Berman said.

As detailed by the complaint, the MOVA technology was critical to
Disney’s ability to successfully recreate one of its most valuable
franchises. Director Bill Condon went further, expressly crediting the
success of the CG Beast to the unique capabilities of MOVA Contour
facial performance capture, saying “…we could get everything else in
this movie right, but if we didn’t get a Beast that people believed in
then [the movie] wouldn’t work.” This sentiment was affirmed by Beauty
and the Beast’s editor, Virginia Katz: “…the main concern, for me and I
think for all [working on the movie], was how that the Beast was going
to be visualized. I mean, if the Beast didn’t work, then the film
wouldn’t work.”

“Disney knew what was at stake,” Berman said. “The MOVA Contour system
led to one of Disney’s most successful blockbusters, and we intend to
recover those ill-gotten gains for our client, Rearden, the rightful
owner of the MOVA Contour technology that was stolen in plain sight.”

Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP is a consumer-rights class-action law
firm with offices in 10 cities. The firm has been named to the National
Law Journal’s Plaintiffs’ Hot List eight times and was also recently
named one of the Most Feared Plaintiffs’ Law Firms in the nation by
Law360. More about Hagens Berman and its successes can be found at www.hbsslaw.com.
Follow the firm for updates and news at @ClassActionLaw.